Album Review: Fabric 43 - Various selected and mixed by Metro Area

Metro Area's breed of obscure disco and raw 80s funk is always a little in danger of coming across as chin stroking wankery. When it works, as on the sublime 'Caught Up' on their self-titled début (in reality a compilation of EPs), it is utterly fantastic but a mix album just might be a case of over-egging the pudding if it takes itself too seriously.

Which is why Fabric 43 is odd, on two counts. Firstly it features a Fabric first as far as BlackPlastic is concerned: a comedy intro. And secondly because, despite this, it still falls flat.

There are glorious moments - World Premier's 'Share The Night (Breakdown Mix)' is everything that can be right about Metro Area. It is light, funky and impossible to not dance too. The instrumental of Disco Four's 'Move To The Groove' is so ridiculously camp that it is irresistible and the juxtaposition of the pop of Heaven 17's 'Penthouse and the Pavement' plays off the inherent disco of one of Sheffield's whilst loosening up the mix.

The problem is really one of sequencing. BlackPlastic hates to say it but there is too much here and too much of it sounds the same. These cuts are ALL good and within the right mix could standout and be a high point. The problem is that there is a lack of navigation, no peak and no development.

On a more positive note the mixing goes some way to making up for this as the blending between some fairly different tracks (in terms or rhythm and melody if not always style) is considered and smooth.

And so Fabric 43 is good.  It will happily see you through a car journey or a dull morning in the office. It just isn't as great as a mix from Metro Area should be.

BP x

Album Review: Music Components - Rebotini

It's nearing Christmas, a time when BlackPlastic has to go digging a little harder through the racks than normal as the release schedule dries up.

The benefit of such dry spells is that they sometimes lead to you finding something a little different, like a copy of Rebotini's Music Components which BlackPlastic came across in Toulouse recently. Rebotini is part of Black Strobe, a group that (once they went their separate ways with Ivan Smagghe) seemed to lose all sense of what made them fantastic and so turned into a goth techno band as an outlet. Their début album, Burn Your Own Church, was not without charms but wasn't want people wants particularly either. Music Components, in some ways at least, goes back and delivers on the original promise.

This is an album of musical constructions produced using a selection of classic synthesizers. It's entirely instrumental, filmic in nature and jet black. An in that sense, it is a better realization of Black Strobe's promise that Black Strobe themselves are. The snide vocals of a 'Me and Madonna' would have been great but the throbbing electronics here are enough to deliver.

This isn't an album that needs much to be said - if you liked 'Inner Strings' and the thought of an album's worth doesn't sound boring then this is worth seeking out.

BP x

Album Review: Secret Machines - Secret Machines

Secret Machines are back, this time with an eponymous, self-released follow up to 2006's Ten Silver Drops. The pop sensibilities have lost out to a heavier sound, more reminiscent of the glorious Now Here Is Nowhere, yet the sure scale of some of Ten Silver Drops' larger moments (the lovely 'Alone, Jealous & Stones') are maintained.

The effect is an album that feels like one-step-back to Ten Silver Drops' two-steps-forward but trust BlackPlastic when we say this is a good thing. The slight lack of unified direction that album suffered from is no longer a problem. What is left is a focused, taught album of progressive rock tracks, be it the space opera of 'I Never Thought To Ask' or the psychotic breakdown of 'The Walls Are Starting To Crack', that will make you feel like you are living in a David Bowie movie.

The self-released aspect may make this trickier to come across but it's still available via the usual channels (iTunes, Amazon) and, as with the rest of the Secret Machines catalogue, it is well worth picking up. Nobody does epics on this scale and as the closing 'The Fire Is Waiting' kicks in the band sound more like a rocket ship departing the launch pad than any of their earth-bound contemporaries.

BP x

Album Review: Convivial - Luomo

Ever since Sasu Ripatti's first album under his Luomo pseudonym, Vocalcity, came out in 2000 it has always received high praise within certain circles. A blogger's favourite, the album's minimalist design and sophisticated textures gained it favour with those prepared to put in the effort. Sadly the cost of this was an album without much mass appeal and so, whilst those that know it generally love it, you are unlikely to find a copy in Tesco.

Several Luomo projects on (Ripatti has several other alter egos) and Convivial could just change all that: it features vocals recorded by a series of guests. Combined with, in places at least, the cold yet organic sound of Ripatti's production you get a mature album that neatly sidesteps any of the issues house (or in this case, minimal / tech-house) albums usually have by just making an album full off those crossover tracks that are gold in the clubs but have vocals good enough to make them work at home.

And so you have Apparat's vocals combined with a pretty ferocious percussion backing on the spooky 'Love You All' and Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears on 'If I Can't'. Robert Owens also guests on 'Robert's Reason', a nice deep-tech-house track, full of funky bleeps and stabs that would be one of Owens' finest pieces in recent memory if only his turn on Layo & Bushwacka!'s debut album, 'Low Life', weren't so damn good that it sticks in your head like your first kiss. The rest of the album's guests may not be as high profile but the music itself shines just as consistently.

But maybe, in some respects, that is a problem. Convivial is, much like Morgan Geist's Double Night Time, undoubtedly a labour of love. It has been less 'recorded', more carved, like something a carpenter might make out of a block of wood. Yet the result is an album that is so consistent and singular in its sound and vision that, in reality, each track sounds best when separated from the surroundings of the rest of the album so it has room to breath.

Having said which Convivial is still a good album. It takes the the foundations of previous Luomo albums and builds on these and the level of sophistication never drops below a dinner-party-for-people-in-their-late-twenties level. BlackPlastic just craves for a few bolder moves that stray a bit further from the comfort zone.

BP x

Album Review: Kitsuné Maison Compilation 6 - Various

Like a bunch of angry youths ditching their regular stabby, dull knives for lovely fresh luminous flick knives the new Kitsuné Maison Compilation (that's 6 to you) leaves behind a little (just a little) of the roughness in favour of some lovely hooks. That's right, Kitsuné Maison 6 is dubbed 'The Melodic One', almost like it is a two-dimensional character within a sitcom.

But it isn't two dimensional, is it? No, because it has melody, in the form of Lo-Fi-Fnk's gorgeously downbeat 'Want U' for example, but it also has nastiness - just check out the rather aggressive 'Say Whoa' by A-Trak or Etienne De Crecy's clanging 'Hanukkah'.

Maison 6's best moments see the above two approaches combined. The burst-ear-drum attack of You Love Her Coz Shes Dead's 'Superheroes' is drenched in distortion and melodies and shouts and hooks and it's like going from being 12 to 25 in three minutes. D.I.M.'s remix of Fischerspooner's 'Danse En France' takes the mildly subtle original, douses it in petrol and then spits a fag at it and the result is a bass line to alienate friends and lovers with but a salve is provided in the melodic hook that has been retained for the bridge.

Predictably then it's all rather good and dependable, a bit like PG Tips for nu-rave kids with glowsticks. If you haven't ever bought a Kitsuné compilation this is what to expect: the sound of that cool alt.friend everyone has, six months early. If you have bought one of the previous releases then chances are you actually are that cool alt.friend so you probably don't need this review.

BP x